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Terminology for Security AssessmentNational Institute of Standards and Technology100 Bureau DriveGaithersburgMaryland20877USAdavid.waltermire@nist.govCenter for Internet Security31 Tech Valley DriveEast GreenbushNew York12061USAadam.montville@cisecurity.orgEffective Software50 Harding RdPortsmouthNH03801USAietfdbh@comcast.netCisco Systems3550 Cisco WaySan JoseUS95134CAncamwing@cisco.comSecurity
Security Automation and Continuous Monitoring WGsecurity automation continuous monitoring sacm terminologyThis memo documents terminology used in the documents produced by SACM (Security Automation and Continuous Monitoring).Our goal with this document is to
improve our agreement on the terminology used in documents produced
by the IETF Working Group for Security Automation and Continuous Monitoring.
Agreeing on terminology should help reach consensus on which problems we're trying to solve,
and propose solutions and decide
which ones to use.This document is expected to be a temporary work product, and will probably
be incorporated into the architecture or other document. This section describes terms that have been defined by other RFC's and defines new ones. The predefined terms will reference the RFC and where appropriate will be annotated with the specific context by which the term is used in SACM.Assessment
Defined in as "the process of collecting posture for a set of capabilities on the endpoint (e.g., host-based firewall) such that the appropriate validators may evaluate the posture against compliance policy."Within this document the use of the term is expanded to support other uses of collected posture (e.g. reporting, network enforcement, vulnerability detection, license management). The phrase "set of capabilities on the endpoint" includes: hardware and software installed on the endpoint."Asset
Defined in as "a system resource that is (a) required to be protected by an information system's security policy, (b) intended to be protected by a countermeasure, or (c) required for a system's mission.Attribute
Defined in as "data element including any requisite meta-data describing an observed, expected, or the operational status of an endpoint feature (e.g., anti-virus software is currently in use)."Endpoint
Defined in as "any computing device that can be connected to a network. Such devices normally are associated with a particular link layer address before joining the network and potentially an IP address once on the network. This includes: laptops, desktops, servers, cell phones, or any device that may have an IP address."To further clarify the definition, an endpoint is any physical or virtual device that may have a network address. Note that, network infrastructure devices (e.g. switches, routers, firewalls), which fit the definition, are also considered to be endpoints within this document.Based on the previous definition of an asset, an endpoint is a type of asset. Information Model
An information model is an abstract representation of data, their properties, relationships between data and the operations that can be performed on the data. While there is some overlap with a data model, distinguished an information model as being protocol and implementation neutral whereas a data model would provide such details. Posture
Defined in as "configuration and/or status of hardware or software on an endpoint as it pertains to an organization's security policy."This term is used within the scope of this document to represent the state information that is collected from an endpoint (e.g. software/hardware inventory, configuration settings). The state information may constitute one to many Posture Attributes.Posture Attributes
Defined in as "attributes describing the configuration or status (posture) of a feature of the endpoint. A Posture Attribute represents a single property of an observed state. For example, a Posture Attribute might describe the version of the operating system installed on the system."Within this document this term represents a specific assertion about endpoint state (e.g. configuration setting, installed software, hardware). The phrase "features of the endpoint" refers to installed software or software components.System Resource
Defined in as "data contained in an information system; or a service provided by a system; or a system capacity, such as processing power or communication bandwidth; or an item of system equipment (i.e., hardware, firmware, software, or documentation); or a facility that houses system operations and equipment. This section defines terms that are not explictly defined in the IETF. Asset characterization
Asset characterization is the process of defining attributes that describe properties of an identified asset. Asset Management
The process by which assets are provisioned, updated, maintained and deprecated.
Asset Targeting
Asset targeting is the use of asset identification and categorization information
to drive human-directed, automated decision making for data collection and analysis in
support of endpoint posture assessment. Building Block
For SACM, a building block is a unit of functionality that may apply to more than one use case and can be supported by different components of an architectural model.
Collection Task
The process by which posture attributes or values are collected. Evaluation Task
The process by which posture attributes are evaluated. Endpoint Target
The endpoint of interest. Endpoint Discovery
The process by which an endpoint can be identified. Evaluation Result
The resulting value from having evaluated a set of posture attributes. Expected Endpoint State
The required state of an endpoint that is to be compared against.
Security Automation
The process of which security alerts can be automated through the use of different tools to monitor, evaluate and analyze endpoint and network traffic for the purposes of detecting misconfigurations, misbehaviors or threats. The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.This memo includes no request to IANA.This memo documents terminology for security automation. While it is about security, it does not affect security.Added simple list of terms extracted from UC draft -05. It is expected that comments will be received
on this list of terms as to whether they should be kept in this document. Those that are kept will
be appropriately defined or cited.Added Vulnerability, Vulnerability Management, xposure, Misconfiguration, and Software flaw.Removed Section 2.1. Cleaned up some editing nits; broke terms into 2 sections (predefined and newly defined terms). Added some of the relevant terms per the proposed list discussed in the IETF 89 meeting.
&RFC2119;
&I-D.draft-ietf-sacm-use-cases;
&RFC4949;
&RFC5209;
&RFC3444;